Thanks for the memories!

Perfect cast and a good story

A Masterpiece!

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Trying to have a relaxing weekend, a group of friends heading into the Louisiana bayou find the local legend of a deranged, mutated killer half-crocodile beast to be true as he begins stalking them through the swamps and must find a way of getting out of the area alive.This one here was quite the enjoyable if somewhat problematic effort. One of the better elements here is the film's rather simplistic and overly-familiar setup which gives this one plenty of rather fun moments here playing up the routine storyline. Playing up the local legend of the town's creature and the tourist-trap mentality that suckers the group in while they're in the store at the beginning gives this a nice start that gets nicely explained quite nicely with the backstory revelation that comes out to spread the story and how it's all connected to the town makes for a nicely cheesy set-up which is all part of the film's charm. As well, the way it plays into the remaining parts of the action as the inclusion of the family hunting them throughout the area in order to follow up the wrinkly in their history where they have to bring them in to mate with their deformed kinsman which is given a new addition in the whole affair putting a creature in the mix as well as this weaving in the folklore of the swampland. That dirty, sweaty swamp- land atmosphere created by this is set-up works pretty well with the high degree of incest and backwoods brutality present in the remaining parts of the storyline which gives this a nicely sleazy aspect to go along with the frequent sexual play between family members and the full-on nudity that's featured prominently in here. All of this works rather well in addition to getting the stage worked up for the generous amount of stalking and action in the second half, which has plenty of great fun here in the forest encounter while out in the campgrounds, the fun of the hand-to-hand fighting in the bushes with the creature and the big battles in the shack's underground tunnels which gives it a really great air here. Likewise, with the fine finale where it goes overboard with the action letting the cool creature design get to be displayed quite often, it really has a lot of rather enjoyable elements here that really holds it up somewhat over the few flaws here. One of the main issues here is the fact that there's just way too much familiarity and reliance on well-worn clichés here that make this feel rather rudimentary and not that original as this plays off like a stereotypical backwoods family effort looking to bred with pure tourists only they feature a deformed monster as one of the family- members which makes it play out like a majority of those types of films. As well, the fact that this one really undermines the brutality of the creature at the ending where he delivers a beat-down big enough to dish out more punishment than what's delivered yet instead there's a rather frustrating article about it that changes the outcome of the hero's antics really downplays the creatures' intensity and aggression elsewhere here, even though that wasn't all that prominent with off-screen kills cutting back to show the mangled bodies. These issues here are what hold this back.Rated R: Extreme Graphic Language, Full Nudity, Graphic Violence, drug use, violence against animals and strong themes of incest.

The opening sequence with Ophelia's swim in the swamp marks this movie as an exploitation effort: full nudity followed by gore and death.The scene then jump shifts to three upscale city couples traveling in an expensive SUV to the backwoods swamps in Louisiana. The six rich kids stop at a general store. They show their general disrespect for local traditions and people. The four men at the general store are depicted as inbred, uneducated, violent, and unsanitary.The good old boys tell a story of the Boutine family, which was dying out some decades ago. The story culminates with the almost wedding of brother and sister (Grimley and Caroline Boutine), who are the last possible breeders in the clan. The ceremony is interrupted by a legendary gator, Lockjaw, who eats the bride. The groom is discouraged by this. He kills the gator, then eats it, including parts of his almost bride. Following one of the clichés of cannibalism, Grimley absorbs some of the strengths of Lockjaw, becoming a man/monster.Let's have a moment of silence for that massive 'jump the shark' incident.The local good old boys warn the six city folk to respect the tradition, which is not explained in any detail. The city folk don't show respect, of course, and the locals attempt to force the tradition on them.Do any of the city youngsters survive this elimination derby and get home? -----Scores-----Cinematography: 6/10 Looked professional at least part of the time.Sound: 7/10 Not too bad.Acting: 4/10 Mehcad Brooks seemed way too old for the part; on the other hand, he was the best actor in the film by far. That in itself was another problem: why would such a level-headed young man get into this mess? Most of the other actors played caricatures, particularly Sid Haig. All of the actors playing swamp folk gave terrible performances.Screenplay: 3/10 The dialog the actors were given was mostly poor. The exposition of motivation left a lot to be desired: why did anyone do any of the things they did in this movie? The worst for me was during the Niles-Lockjaw fight. There is no way that Niles could survive even one hit from the monster, much less 15 or so. Ridiculous.SFX: 3/10 The creature effects were modestly convincing; they were reminiscent of the Creature in the Black Lagoon (1954). The gore effects were not convincing at all.

Oh, man, could this have been a good one. Too bad. The filmmakers got a lot of mileage out of Sid Haig's appearance in "Creature", a monster mayhem movie with just enough boobs to make it worth at least one watch. The cast is made up of beautiful people, and the rubber suit monster is quite grotesque (referred to as Lockjaw, kind of a half-man/half-gator). The plot is ridiculously simple: a group of friends are on their way to the Big Easy when they stop off at a gas station with a shrine dedicated to backwoods monster lore in the back of the store. Curious, the group decide to visit the dilapidated cabin of a man named Grisby, known for killing a large white gator that was terrorizing the swamp lands around the area, himself becoming a monster after going insane, eating from the remains of the creature's killing den, and remaining in the swamp, in essence transforming into Lockjaw. What the twentysomethings are unaware of is that Lockjaw is very real and that the backwoods folk keep him fed so their bloodline can continue. Haig is one of the locals who keeps Lockjaw's appetite satiated. Haig's presence alone helps this tease of a fun horror movie, but his energy and charisma can do little to compensate for a lack of on screen grue. There's a bit of titillation (the opening of this movie has a female victim stripping naked and giving us a nice full frontal (and back so we can savor her ass) shot of her gorgeous nude form), with multiple lasting shots of breasts (Lauren Schneider, the bubbly redhead with a great sense of humor and enthusiasm, delightfully shows her rack to a grinning Haig, also smooching with a drunk Amanda Fuller (who has her top and bra removed by a jovial Schneider, in a horny mood) with a possible lesbian seduction interrupted by boyfriend Aaron Hill killing a snake, dammit), but like most of the possible gory violence, never enough to warrant any real satisfaction. The severed limbs props (a head, foot, etc) are really right out of a William Castle movie, and the monster's rampage is all about what you don't see. Hell, we don't even get to delight in much of the beast's aftermath. This movie really gives you little of anything that can be considered essential viewing. The cast does seem game, though. Too cheap and unimaginative. This could have been a decent companion to Adam Green's Hatchet, but, alas, "Creature" just doesn't offer much in the way of thrills. Mehcad Brooks gets to be the token black character who actually plays the final hero of the picture, trying to rescue his photographer hottie from being the monster's plaything.

I heard about this film from looking up new DVD releases on the net. I stumbled across this title and thought the trailer deserved a look-see. After I watched the trailer I thought it looked pretty decent, it seemed to be filmed on quality film grade and not cheesy porno film grade, like most low budgeters these days. I suspect this film was released in a limited amount of theatre's across the United States. I live in Canada, so we don't really get those kind of releases, over here it usually consists of high budget releases(unfortunately).Well, despite of this, I thought the film started out a little cliché so to speak, with your typical teenage group on a road trip, when they stumble an old fashioned southern town, as they drive through, they then notice all the church's seem to be "Out of Business", they also run into a gas station that has no gas,(of course, just like in chainsaw). We then all see the typical and now stereotyped Sid Haig, as the local owner of the gas station named "CHOPPERS", which is named after himself.Haig's character, is almost exact to the character he played in "Rob Zombie's House of a 1000 corpses", he continues on to explain to the "little teenies" telling them where they can find the recollection of the silly southern local legend of the half man, half alligator, due to some weird inception of eating human remains, while grieving over the fact that the main star of the legend had his incest sister eaten by a gator.But that's where the character stereotyping ends. Sid Haig's character is then expanded into something different.I don't really want to move into too much detail, so I'll continue on with my overall review.I thought that the making of the teenage group at first seemed stereotypical, and was very cliché, and that's the point of this film (in my opinion). You got the white clichéd, rich road tripping teenagers with the one black guy. But once again that's where the similarities end. Everything about this film seems campy, and that's how it's supposed to be. That's the point, it's a film mixed with all generations of horror films, such as "The Creature from the Black Lagoon","The Texas Chainsaw Massacre(1973)", "Friday the 13th", "House of a 1000 Corpses", and so on.There was a little twist thrown in which involved one of the main teenage characters. This was a surprise to me. I didn't think at first that this film would have any talented writing to catch me off guard. But they did, and bravo!In turn, I read most of the reviews on this site and they seemed to be very negative, well I really don't think that they were in the right frame of mind. I don't think that they got the point of the film at all. Hence the title of the film "Creature". This is kind of a generational "hats off" to all the different styles of horror monsters, and slasher films that have been released thus far, from the 50's monster/creature films to the 70's "docustyle" films to the 80's slasher flick, to the 90's generation of knowing all the rules of horror movies and cheesiness through such films as the "Scream" series.This film like I said in my opinion is supposed to be a hats off, and to be taken lightly. I don't think it should be put down at all. It has all the remedies of a cult classic, the only thing that hinders this, is the lack of promotion, and that's the only way "people think these days" if it's not in your face advertising then it's stupid. Well as far as I'm concerned the crap in the theatre that is advertised well, ends up being total rubbish and forgotten about by next week,(50% of them anyway).I found that independent films mean more to me than most films released today in our theatre's. Everything seems to be forced fed to us, and that's a real turn off. I for one will remember this little horror flick as something different, that carried all the magical remedies of all the cool horror films from the past. So finally I must add "Hat's Off" to all the hard working people that made this monster film possible. It's definitely interesting and worth a watch. Bravo, and thanks to the all the actors and film crew involved. I think with all the crappy remakes out there that this film should be respected.Thanks for readingJeffrey J Turner Sarnia ON Canada